Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lies Employers Use to Get You to Work with Them

linkedin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 83 posts

Re: Lies Employers Use to Get You to Work with Them

#51

Post by hga »

fredkbloggs wrote: post #47
Aloisius wrote: post #31

I don't want to hire anyone who would be unhappy working for me. Lying to someone about what their life would be like working at the company seems totally counterproductive to that goal. I do appreciate it when a candidate has a list of questions related to things that are important to them. In my experience though, that is exceedingly rare - at least with engineers. I'm lucky to be asked basic questions like what ti…

The essence of the modern employment contract is that we keep showing up and doing more or less what we're told, and you keep the paychecks coming until doing so would jeopardize senior management pay, at which point you kick us to the curb with nothing. Anyone on either side of the table expecting something else is delusional. > I don't want to hire anyone who would be unhappy working for me. Then you're not going t…

Hmmm; while I'm definitely old fashioned (entered the job market in 1980), part of my "employment contract" is lies made during the hiring process, or the akin later in the course of employment, provide me with the moral basis to quit the jobs at any time, and with 0 days notice if I so prefer. How I "kick companies to the curb" if needed (and more than a few have then died as a result).

Re: Lies Employers Use to Get You to Work with Them

#52

Post by s73v3r »

Aloisius wrote: post #31

I don't want to hire anyone who would be unhappy working for me. Lying to someone about what their life would be like working at the company seems totally counterproductive to that goal. I do appreciate it when a candidate has a list of questions related to things that are important to them. In my experience though, that is exceedingly rare - at least with engineers. I'm lucky to be asked basic questions like what ti…

"I do appreciate it when a candidate has a list of questions related to things that are important to them. In my experience though, that is exceedingly rare - at least with engineers."

It's rare because in our experience, this does nothing to help your chances of getting the job, and can do a lot to hurt them. And while they can help you root out places you don't want to work, many places will simply lie.

Re: Lies Employers Use to Get You to Work with Them

#53

Post by s73v3r »

alistairSH wrote: post #41
coldcode wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a company that took 90 interns per summer. All of them outside of our mobile team did nothing but fake intern projects. We made ours do actual product work that shipped; the rest of the interns were very jealous. We made offers to three and one accepted, the other two went on to graduate degrees.

How are those "fake projects" not a gigantic waste of everybody's time? We put our interns to work - either embedded on product teams, or working with our architecture/R&D teams on new technology. I think the interns generally enjoy the experience and we try to hire the best of them back after graduation.

They still allow you to judge the capability of those working on them. And in the US at least, you're not supposed to have interns working on something you'd otherwise have a regular, full time employee on. The whole keeping companies from replacing employees with cheap interns thing.

Re: Lies Employers Use to Get You to Work with Them

#54

Post by fredkbloggs »

slantyyz wrote: post #30
basseq wrote: post #6

1, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are weasel words. What is "a lot"; what is "extensive"; how often is "on occasion"? They're not lies: they just mean nothing. 2 and 3 are firm statements: ask for them in writing. Even if they're not in an official employment contract, an email stating same might give you enough ammo for a Fraudulent Inducement Of Employment case (if push came to shove). Ask follow-up questions to get a quantitative…

>> They're not lies: they just mean nothing. Everything in the article's list is a basically gratuitous promise. Things change -- the economy, the financial performance of the company, management, etc. Any change can be justification to nullify one or more of those promises. The easy way to see if the hiring company is lying? Ask them to put everything in the contract, and put --numbers-- where applicable (30 days of…

No one is going to put that stuff in a contract unless it's a senior management position. The company cares much less about hiring you, no matter who you are, than about capping its liability. If you do manage to get such terms written in, you can bet that the company will still have no obligation to you as it can simply terminate the contract at any time without compensation. Even in a strong market, there are plenty of other candidates out there who will either value the gratuitous promises or simply ignore them, so there's no need to risk any real contractual liability just to hire you.

Re: Lies Employers Use to Get You to Work with Them

#55

Post by dragonwriter »

s73v3r wrote: post #53
alistairSH wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are those "fake projects" not a gigantic waste of everybody's time? We put our interns to work - either embedded on product teams, or working with our architecture/R&D teams on new technology. I think the interns generally enjoy the experience and we try to hire the best of them back after graduation.

They still allow you to judge the capability of those working on them. And in the US at least, you're not supposed to have interns working on something you'd otherwise have a regular, full time employee on. The whole keeping companies from replacing employees with cheap interns thing.

To the extent that approximates a real restriction, it applies specifically to unpaid interns.

Re: Lies Employers Use to Get You to Work with Them

#57

Post by conradfr »

Nacraile wrote: post #39
michaelochurch wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High-trust and low-trust understate the severity of the phase change, which is more accurately described as a shift from trust-density to trust-sparsity. You go from a state where people spawn with the "bozo bit" off to one where they spawn with it on. You get a completely different political dynamic when that happens. Obviously, trust has varying degrees and context. In Japan, you can leave your laptop at a cafe; in…

> CS graduates from MIT and Stanford could be expected to justify hours of their time in "Scrum ceremonies" (which means that they aren't trusted, which means that their credentialing institutions and work experiences aren't trusted). Even average programmers in the bowels of Fortune 500's IT organizations had more autonomy than the typical "Agile" programmer today. If that's been your experience with Agile, you've h…

I'm dubious of DSM's merits. I've asked people (in small team nonetheless) less than one hour after a DSM what others have done / were doing and usually they couldn't remember.

I personally think a good team leader / project manager and an issue tracker + git annotations is better.

Re: Lies Employers Use to Get You to Work with Them

#58

Post by Nacraile »

conradfr wrote: post #57
Nacraile wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CS graduates from MIT and Stanford could be expected to justify hours of their time in "Scrum ceremonies" (which means that they aren't trusted, which means that their credentialing institutions and work experiences aren't trusted). Even average programmers in the bowels of Fortune 500's IT organizations had more autonomy than the typical "Agile" programmer today. If that's been your experience with Agile, you've h…

I'm dubious of DSM's merits. I've asked people (in small team nonetheless) less than one hour after a DSM what others have done / were doing and usually they couldn't remember. I personally think a good team leader / project manager and an issue tracker + git annotations is better.

I'm not surprised that people quickly forget irrelevant information. The value is in the times somebody says "hey, it sounds like you're touching code I'm working in, lets co-ordinate" or "it sounds like you're doing task A the hard way, lets talk about it".

On my team, the throw-away todo listing usually goes very quickly. The value is in the discussion it frequently spawns. In my environment, stand-up spawns such discussion sooner and more reliably than CR/commits/etc.

Re: Lies Employers Use to Get You to Work with Them

#59

Post by monroepe »

thirdtruck wrote: post #34
monroepe wrote: post #3

My new manager just admitted to me a couple weeks back that my old manager (who is his manager now) straight up lied to me to get me in the door. He lied about how quickly my salary would increase. They told me that every six months salary is generally increased. Now that six months has come, he tells me that it is very rare for an increase mid-year.

How do you know which of the two managers is lying? (Could be both.)

Haha. True.

Re: Lies Employers Use to Get You to Work with Them

#60

Post by monroepe »

RogerL wrote: post #20
monroepe wrote: post #3

My new manager just admitted to me a couple weeks back that my old manager (who is his manager now) straight up lied to me to get me in the door. He lied about how quickly my salary would increase. They told me that every six months salary is generally increased. Now that six months has come, he tells me that it is very rare for an increase mid-year.

If it isn't in writing, it doesn't count. Heck, in writing doesn't count for much if it isn't part of a contract.

That's what my friend told me too when I was considering the original offer. I actually flat out rejected it because it was far too low. They went up a little bit when I did that and then the promises came too. I figured 6 months wasn't so long and I could always look for something else if they don't keep their end.
Post reply on HN